When there is a date following the name of a story, it is the date the manuscript of that story was first received by Dick's agent, per the records of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Absence of a date means no record is available. The name of a magazine followed by a month and year indicates the first published appearance of a story. An alternate name following a story indicates Dick's original name for the story, as shown in the agency records.
These five volumes include all of Philip K. Dick's short fiction, with the exception of short novels later published as or included in novels, childhood writings, and unpublished writings for which manuscripts have not been found. The stories are arranged as closely as possible in chronological order of composition; research for this chronology was done by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams.
THE COOKIE LADY 8/27/52. Fantasy Fiction, June 1953.
BEYOND THE DOOR 8/29/52. Fantastic Universe, Jan 1954.
SECOND VARIETY 10/3/52. Space Science Fiction, May 1953.
My grand theme—who is human and who only appears(masquerades) as human?—emerges most fully. Unless we can individually and collectively be certain of the answer to this question, we face what is, in my view, the most serious problem possible. Without answering it adequately, we cannot even be certain of our own selves. I cannot even know myself, let alone you. So I keep working on this theme; to me nothing is as important a question. And the answer comes very hard. (1976)
JON'S WORLD ("Jon") 10/21/52. Time to Come, edited by August Derleth, New York, 1954.
THE COSMIC POACHERS ("Burglar") 10/22/52. Imagination, July 1953.
PROGENY 11/3/52. If, Nov 1954.
SOME KINDS OF LIFE (The Beleaguered") 11/3/52. Fantastic Universe, Oct-Nov 1953 [under the pseudonym Richard Phillips].
MARTIANS COME IN CLOUDS ("The Buggies") 11/5/52. Fantastic Universe, June-July 1954.
THE COMMUTER 11/19/52. Amazing, Aug-Sept 1953.
THE WORLD SHE WANTED 11/24/52. Science Fiction Quarterly, May 1953.
A SURFACE RAID 12/2/52. Fantastic Universe, July 1955.
PROJECT: EARTH ("One Who Stole") 1/6/53. Imagination, Dec 1953.
THE TROUBLE WITH BUBBLES ("Plaything") 1/13/53. If, Sept 1953.
BREAKFAST AT TWILIGHT 1/17/53. Amazing, July 1954.
There you are in your home, and the soldiers smash down the door and tell you you're in the middle of World War III. Something's gone wrong with time. I like to fiddle with the idea of basic categories of reality, such as space and time, breaking down. It's my love of chaos, I suppose. (1976)
A PRESENT FOR PAT 1/17/53. Startling Stories, Jan 1954.
THE HOOD MAKER ("Immunity") 1/26/53. Imagination, June 1955.
OF WITHERED APPLES 1/26/53. Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy, July 1954.
HUMAN IS 2/2/53. Startling Stories, Winter 1955.
To me, this story states my early conclusions as to what is human. I have not really changed my view since I wrote this story, back in the Fifties. It's not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It's how kind you are. The quality of kindness, to me, distinguishes us from rocks and sticks and metal, and will forever, whatever shape we take, wherever we go, whatever we become. For me, Human Is is my credo. May it be yours. (1976)
ADJUSTMENT TEAM 2/11/53. Orbit Science Fiction, Sept-Oct 1954.
THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET ("Legend") 2/11/53. Imagination, Oct 1953.
IMPOSTER 2/24/53. Astounding, June 1953.
Here was my first story on the topic of: Am I a human? Or am I just programmed to believe I am human? When you consider that I wrote this back in 1953, it was, if I may say so, a pretty damn good new idea in sf. Of course, by now I've done it to death. But the theme still preoccupies me. It's an important theme because it forces us to ask: What is a human? And—what isn't? (1976)
JAMES P. CROW 3/17/53. Planet Stories, May 1954.
PLANET FOR TRANSIENTS ("The Itinerants") 3/23/53. Fantastic Universe, Oct-Nov 1953. [Parts of this story were adapted for the novel DEUS IRAE.]
SMALL TOWN ("Engineer") 3/23/53. Amazing, May 1954.
Here the frustrations of a defeated small person—small in terms of power, in particular power over others—gradually become transformed into something sinister: the force of death. In rereading this story (which is of course a fantasy, not science fiction) I am impressed by the subtle change which takes place in the protagonist from Trod-Upon to Treader. Verne Haskel initially appears as the prototype of the impotent human being, but this conceals a drive at his core self which is anything but weak. It is as if I am saying, The put-upon person may be very dangerous. Be careful as to how you misuse him; he may be a mask for thanatos: the antagonist of life; he may not secretly wish to rule, he may wish to destroy. (1979)
SOUVENIR 3/26/53. Fantastic Universe, Oct 1954.
SURVEY TEAM 4/3/53. Fantastic Universe, May 1954.
PROMINENT AUTHOR 4/20/53. If, May 1954.
Volume Three
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK
THE FATHER-THING
Introduction by John Brunner
U/M
UNDERWOOD/MILLER
Los Angeles, California
Columbia, Pennsylvania
1987
VOLUME THREE
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK
THE FATHER-THING
Slipcased Edition: ISBN O-88733-052-5 (set)
Trade Edition: ISBN O-88733-053-3 (set)
Copyright © 1987 by The Estate of Philip K. Dick
Introduction © 1987 by Brunner Fact & Fiction Ltd.
Entire contents Copyright © 1987 by The Estate of Philip K. Dick. Individual stories were copyrighted in their year of first publication (see "Notes" at the back of each volume for more information) and copyrights have been renewed by Philip K. Dick and The Estate of Philip K. Dick as applicable. Previously unpublished stories arc Copyright © 1987 by The Estate of Philip K. Dick. All rights reserved.
The excerpt by Philip K. Dick which appears in the beginning of this volume is from a collection of interviews with the author conducted by Paul Williams and published in ONLY APPARENTLY REAL, Arbor House, 1986. Used with permission.
For information about the Philip K. Dick Society. write to PKDS, Box 611, Glen Ellen, CA 95442 USA.
An Underwood-Miller book by arrangement with the author's agent and estate. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without explicit permission, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages. For information address the publisher, Underwood-Miller, 515 Chestnut Street, Columbia, PA 17512.
Printed in the United States of America
Typesetting by Metro Typography, Santa Cruz, California
Book Design: Underwood-Miller.
All Rights Reserved
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number
87- 50l57
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
FAIR GAME
THE HANGING STRANGER
THE EYES HAVE IT
THE GOLDEN MAN
THE TURNING WHEEL
THE LAST OF THE MASTERS
THE FATHER-THING
STRANGE EDEN
TONY AND THE BEETLES
NULL-O
TO SERVE THE MASTER
EXHIBIT PIECE
THE CRAWLERS
SALES PITCH
SHELL GAME
UPON THE DULL EARTH
FOSTER, YOU'RE DEAD
PAY FOR THE PRINTER
WAR VETERAN
THE CHROMIUM FENCE
MISADJUSTMENT
A WORLD OF TALENT
PSI-MAN HEAL MY CHILD!
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
By John Brunner
I have thirty-three books by Philip Dick on my shelves. In the near future I hope to have thirty-eight, more than twice as many as by any other science fiction author. The closest contender weighs
in with a mere eighteen, and four of those are anthologies he edited.
Why? Why do I own so many more of his books than of anybody else's?
Well, put it this way. Dick is the man who made me accept, even if only for the duration of one novel, that there could be a society in which the medium of currency exchange was orange marmalade.
I've been trying to recall my first encounter with the guy's work. I suspect it must have been when I read what I understand was his first-ever publication in the SF field, Beyond Lies the Wub. It was told in a workmanlike style and had a pleasantly amusing punch-line, all in all a praiseworthy début. But in the short stories that followed—report had it that he was writing one per week—one had the impression of someone still trying to find his own voice. In particular, I noticed many echoes of the much-lamented Henry Kuttner. I had to wait for his novels before I realized just how individual an imagination Dick possessed, how ingeniously he could twist our world into strange patterns, or tilt it at an unfamiliar angle to create a disturbing new perspective, combined with a sense of sheer otherness that for days and sometimes months afterwards left festering barbs in the subconscious of the reader.
I remember buying a tattered second-hand copy of SOLAR LOTTERY and devouring it at a sitting. I remember sweating through the days between installments of TIME OUT OF JOINT when Ted Carnell serialized it in New Worlds. And after I'd read those two, I was convinced. I knew I had to go in search of everything else by him that I could find.
In 1966, also in New Worlds, I published a tub-thumping, drum-beating article about his work—at that time too little known in Britain—which, I must at last admit, was motivated at least partly by self-interest; I wanted to be able to buy more of his books… Ten years after, I had the pleasure of being asked to write a preface to Ballantine's THE BEST OF PHILIP K. DICK. A decade later still, in 1986, here I am invited to perform a similar and equally gratifying task.
But considerably more difficult. I don't want to plagiarize myself, you see, and on re-reading my 1976 article I find that in it I summed up everything I thought then, and everything I still think, about what made Dick's work extraordinary. I talked about the nature of the Dickian world, its near-emptiness, its sterility, its resemblance to our own and its unsettling differences. I talked about the altered perceptions that he could entrain in the reader's mind, and the deftness with which he sustained absurd assumptions for just as long as was necessary to prevent the reader from tossing the book aside in disbelief—marmalade money being only one of countless examples. I talked about his prodigal largesse with ideas and concepts that most writers would regard as central but he treated as peripheral, citing above all that marvellous scene in which one of his characters says to another, "God is dead." And this is known; a creature sufficiently evolved to have created the Earth and all its life-forms including us has been found drifting in space. Yet within the story this fact is simply not important…
I'm tempted to quote my 1976 piece in extenso. But I'd better not. This is a later age, and Phil is dead, and this time there won't be any helpful letters from him suggesting items for inclusion in the proposed collection, because it is—deservedly—complete.
Nor, come to that, respectful but irritable ones listing others he preferred to see left out.
I first met him during a pre-Worldcon party in 1964, in Oakland, California. He was not as I'd imagined. From his prolificity and mordant wit I'd expected a relaxed if rather cynical person. Instead I found a very shy one, reluctant to make eye-contact with a stranger like myself, glancing constantly around as though to make sure a way of escape was open. Later I learned how deeply tormented he was by the idiocies of the world, how personally he felt the slights visited on our collective intelligence by those who pretend to speak in our name and that of our civilization, who exercise power over us yet think only of themselves. How seriously he wanted to be taken when he devised his simulacra of politicians, from his eternal Jackie Kennedy to his stubborn duplicate of Lincoln, I could never tell. But it didn't matter. He had hit on yet another brilliant image for the faults and shortcomings of our world, another facet of the mirror he held up to it, that distorted and nonetheless in some inexplicable manner reflected a greater truth, an aspect nearer to reality.
At our last meeting, in France during one of the Metz science fiction festivals, I equally failed to figure out how literally he intended people to regard his claims about communicating with the Apostle Paul, or having killed a cat by willing it to death. I could not decide whether, after so many years of inner suffering, his reason had been usurped by his own inventions, or whether he had reached the bitter conclusion that the only way to cope with our lunatic world was to treat it as one vast and rather vicious joke, and fight back on the same irrational level.
I think—I hope—the latter, for it implies that in his writing he had found the solution, or at any rate a solution, to the manifold problems he had been confronted by: his frustration at not being recognized in the field of general literature, his broken marriages, the mysterious raid on his house described in Paul Williams' book ONLY APPARENTLY REAL, and all the rest. He was a strange person but a wonderful writer, and perhaps his writing offered him catharsis. Certainly it provided his readership with a unique experience.
And that, I think, says all that needs to be said concerning why I have thirty-three of his books and hope soon to have thirty-eight.
Read on, and be impressed.
John Brunner
South Petherton
England
October 1986
I think we're getting a restricted view of actual patterns. And the restricted view says that people do things deliberately, in concert, aimed at me, where in truth there are patterns that emanate from beyond people. And they're certainly not directed at any of us, you know; they're much broader, and they work through all of us.
—Philip K. Dick in an interview, 1974.
FAIR GAME
PROFESSOR ANTHONY DOUGLAS lowered gratefully into his red-leather easy chair and sighed. A long sigh, accompanied by labored removal of his shoes and numerous grunts as he kicked them into the corner. He folded his hands across his ample middle and lay back, eyes closed.
"Tired?" Laura Douglas asked, turning from the kitchen stove a moment, her dark eyes sympathetic.
"You're darn right." Douglas surveyed the evening paper across from him on the couch. Was it worth it? No, not really. He felt around in his coat pocket for his cigarettes and lit up slowly, leisurely. "Yeah, I'm tired, all right. We're starting a whole new line of research. Whole flock of bright young men in from Washington today. Briefcases and slide rules."
"Not—"
"Oh, I'm still in charge." Professor Douglas grinned expansively. "Perish the thought." Pale gray cigarette smoke billowed around him. "It'll be another few years before they're ahead of me. They'll have to sharpen up their slide rules just a little bit more…"
His wife smiled and continued preparing dinner. Maybe it was the atmosphere of the little Colorado town. The sturdy, impassive mountain peaks around them. The thin, chill air. The quiet citizens. In any case, her husband seemed utterly unbothered by the tensions and doubts that pressured other members of his profession. A lot of aggressive newcomers were swelling the ranks of nuclear physics these days. Old-timers were tottering in their positions, abruptly insecure. Every college, every physics department and lab was being invaded by the new horde of skilled young men. Even here at Bryant College, so far off the beaten track.
But if Anthony Douglas worried, he never let it show. He rested happily in his easy chair, eyes shut, a blissful smile on his face. He was tired—but at peace. He sighed again, this time more from pleasure than fatigue.
"It's true," he murmured lazily. "I may be old enough to be their father, but I'm still a few jumps ahead of them. Of course, I know the ropes better. And—"
"And the wires. The ones worth pulling."
"Those, too. In any case, I think I'll come off from
this new line we're doing just about…"
His voice trailed off.
"What's the matter?" Laura asked.
Douglas half rose from his chair. His face had gone suddenly white. He stared in horror, gripping the arms of his chair, his mouth opening and closing.
At the window was a great eye. An immense eye that gazed into the room intently, studying him. The eye filled the whole window.
"Good God!" Douglas cried.
The eye withdrew. Outside there was only the evening gloom, the dark hills and trees, the street. Douglas sank down slowly in his chair.
"What was it?" Laura demanded sharply. "What did you see? Was somebody out there?"
Douglas clasped and unclasped his hands. His lips twitched violently. "I'm telling you the truth, Bill. I saw it myself. It was real. I wouldn't say so, otherwise. You know that. Don't you believe me?"
"Did anybody else see it?" Professor William Henderson asked, chewing his pencil thoughtfully. He had cleared a place on the dinner table, pushed back his plate and silver and laid out his notebook. "Did Laura see it?"
"No. Laura had her back turned."
"What time was it?"
"Half an hour ago. I had just got home. About six-thirty. I had my shoes off, taking it easy." Douglas wiped his forehead with a shaking hand.
"You say it was unattached? There was nothing else? Just the—eye?"
"Just the eye. One huge eye looking in at me. Taking in everything. As if—"
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report Page 102
